| You find yourself
mopping the streets of Pike City, Michigan. Your on-going history stipulating
long afternoons of Community Service has prepared you well. Mostly you know how to look busy and coast over a lot of ground without wasting any more energy than you need to. You need to flex your muscles every once in a while, keeping aware of who might be watching your criminal delinquent strut, but being careful to never glance directly at them. Still, you wonder exactly what you have done to get this assignment. Most of your illegal brilliance flies far below the sonar of even the keenest of minds over at the Police Athletic League. There has evidently been some sort of parade, so the streets are strewn with taffy and tickertape, tootsie rolls and nickels. Perhaps that is vomit over there. It has the sheen of your standard Pike City breakfast of raw muskelunge and champagne. You know you should mop that up right away but first you pick up the nickels. You get dizzy from chasing them everywhere, and remembering somehow that you are in a dream, you wonder if the room is spinning. But how could that be, you only had three or so fingers of gin? Oh, but you drank out of Gary's birdbath, too. Well no wonder there is a degree of dizziness in this town. There is something strange about these nickels, though. They feel kind of squishy in your hand. They are too shiny for nickels, someone has tried too hard. You look closer and see that they are homemade nickels. "Bank of Flanagan." Flanagan! What could that old coot be up to? You had better ask the experts. You look down at your mop and see that it is now Flanagan himself, as skinny as a shiv and upside-down as usual. You have been mopping the town with Flanagan. He smiles and says "Don't be droppin' dimes, man." If you decide to try to spend the nickels at the nearby Bucket of Blood Saloon, go to page 2. If you would rather spend some time strolling the musky dusky streets of Pike City, go to page 9
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